8.2 How To Create A Channel

You should create a channel for each one of your sites.

Within a site, you’ll still have the option of creating channels for individualpages if desired, and this can be useful if you want to check how well ads aredoing on a certain set of pages versus another set. But start by creating one URL channel for each site and you’ll have the general overview that you canuse as a starting point for your tracking.And it’s very easy to do.The first thing you’ll want to do is create URL channels.

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The original Channels required you to manually change AdSense tags foreach ad block you wanted to track. Many AdSense partners complained aboutthe pesky old channels, and at last, Google launched its URL Channels tomake life easier.

You can use URL Channels to track individual pages or just specify thedomain name to track all the pages in that website. The pages or websitesyou add will be automatically tracked — there's no need to manually changethe code on those pages. Neat!

If I need to track all the ad units appearing on my websitehttp://www.dealofday.com/, I just need to feed in the domain name and Google doesthe rest. The URL Channels are especially useful if you have several websites,and have a general idea of the formats, colors, alignment etc. that worksbest for you.

Remember though, you still need the original, Custom Channels if you wantto track ads across different domain names, based on ad sizes, formats,colors etc.For instance, if I want to track left-aligned ads across all my websites (siteswith different domain names), I need to group them together into a singlechannel and manually change the channel code for each page.First, I name the new channel:

Then I choose the Ad Type, Layout and Color of the ads I want to track:

Finally, it’s simply a matter of allocating an alternate URL if I don’t wantpublic service ads, selecting the channel and copying and pasting the codeonto each of the pages that contain the sort of ad I want to track:

Of course, I would then have to repeat the process if I wanted to track ads ofa particular color or size.

While Google can now track ad performance for your specified domain name,please don't expect URL or Custom Channels to give you data about yourvisitors, such as who referred them to your website or which web browserthey use. These are details only your server logs can tell you.